EastEnders' Shane Richie is coming to Edinburgh as you have never seen him before - in drag!

However, while EastEnders’ favourite Shane Richie makes his big entrance as the glamorous drag queen look graceful, a lot of thought has gone into it, which is why, ahead of the show’s run at the Festival Theatre, he is keen to know about the rake on the stage. The rake, for those unfamiliar with the term, describes the gradient of the stage as it slopes towards the stalls.

It’s all to do with his heels the 55-year-old explains. “Playing a drag queen, I’ve got calves of steel right now but me bloody back is killing me, wearing five inch heels on stage will take its toll,” he explains.“And I can't remember if there’s a rake on the stage at the Festival Theatre, because depending on the slope, that will dictate what heels I wear.”

He adds, “I do remember that the King’s had a very steep rake.”

A decision on the shoes will be made when the cast arrive in Edinburgh on Tuesday. “I go out and test every stage and decide whether we’re having the stilettos on or just a flat heel...” he laughs, “I’m like a big old tart, basically.”

Richie is no stranger to the Capital, first making an impression on Edinburgh audiences in the Seventies’ musical Boogie Nights back in 1998. “Mate, that show still tours,” he says, proudly, “Apparently somewhere in the world, it's always on. It was one of the first juke box musicals. We managed to get a load of songs and wrote a story based loosely on my own story. It was originally going to be a play, but now, you try and get permission to use any Rose Royce or Elton John song and you have to pay thousands of pounds, we paid peanuts because no one was doing it then.”

Twenty-two years later, it’s a very different production that brings Richie back to the Nicolson Street stage. Inspired by a true story, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie charts the life of Jamie New, a 16-year-old living on a council estate in Sheffield. Jamie doesn’t quite fit in and is terrified about the future, he is also going to be a sensation. Supported by his loving mum and surrounded by his friends, Jamie overcomes prejudice, beats the bullies and steps out of the darkness, into the spotlight... as a young drag queen. Richie plays his mentor Hugo, aka Loco Chanelle.

“I was a fan of the score when it opened in Sheffield four years ago but although I had heard the music, I hadn’t seen the show,” recalls the actor. “Then it kind of gathered momentum and when it opened in the West End I got asked if I’d go in. I’d just done a Christmas storyline on EastEnders at the time and knew I was coming out of it for a while so I went along to see it. They said, ‘We’d like you to play the drag queen.’ I said, ‘Hold on, before I decide, I need to bring my wife and kids to see it,’ just so that they knew what daddy might be doing for a living for a while. So they came and saw it and my daughter said, ‘Oh dad, you’ve got to do it, it’s such a great story about diversity’.”

He continues, “It’s about acceptance, about daring to be different and it ticks a box for the generation of today so I threw myself into it, but I was only there for about three months because I had to leave to go and do another job. However, I felt I didn’t get everything I wanted to out of it.”

With unfinished business between himself and the character, when Richie was asked to reprise the role on tour, he jumped at the chance. “When they said, ‘How do you fancy it?’ I went, ‘Yes, bloody right’, to be part of something that is current and real and new is an honour.”

A bonus, he reveals, was discovering the tour included Edinburgh, a city it’s obvious he adores.“To be coming back to Edinburgh...” he beams. "What is interesting is that a lot of the cast are straight out of drama school and have never been to Edinburgh, in fact a lot of them have never been to Scotland, so I’ve promised to organise a ghost tour for them,” he laughs.

Reprising his West End role has proved a liberating experience, he reflects. “Just before Christmas I finished the John Osborne play The Entertainer in which I was playing Archie Rice.

He is the total opposite of the character I’m playing now; Archie is a homophobic, racist pig. Going from that character to Hugo and Loco Chanelle, going right across the spectrum to playing a gay man who owns a drag store and becomes Jamie’s mentor, is very liberating.”

That said, there is one backstage moment in the musical that might not quite be a ‘liberating’ as Richie makes it sound.

He laughs, “My character closes the first act as Loco Chanelle - I have 18 minutes to get out of costume as Hugo and into drag, which, if you ask any drag queen, can normally take up to two and a half hours.”

A quick change if ever there one, but has playing Loco tempted him to play a character like Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror Show perhaps? “Nah, all the Frank N Furters want to play Loco Chanelle now,” he grins. “Funnily enough, I had an opportunity to do that years ago and I’ve been asked to do Edna Turnblad in Hairspray...” he pauses for a moment before adding, “But I think, once you finally put a dress on, it’s so liberating that all the characters you go on to play end up in drag. Just imagine if Alfie Moon came back as a drag queen?” he laughs.

Talking of EastEnders, Richie, who played Alfie Moon form 2002 to 2019, still has a place in his heart for the soap which recently celebrated its 35th birthday - he tweeted them congratulations at the time.

“I was there for the 25th anniversary and the 30th anniversary and I had the best time on the show. When Kat and Alfie got together we pulled in between 12 and 16 million viewers, but TV has changed now. There are so many more channels, back then there was no i-Player, no social media, you had no Netflix, no Amazon Prime, and you still had the Sunday afternoon omnibus for people who would watch two hours of EastEnders with their Sunday dinner on their lap. But the show still goes from strength to strength and I’m still proud to have been a small part in that big machine.”

It was with his EastEnders co-star Jessie Wallace, she played Kat Slater in the soap, that Richie last toured to the Capital with four years ago in a play called The Perfect Murder.

“We had the best time,” he smiles. “We were sharing accommodation, we had apartments next door to each other and every morning we went, ‘Right, what shall we do today?’

“We did the Castle trip, we went shopping, loads of stuff, which is why I don’t want the Jamie cast to get up there without soaking up everything Edinburgh has to offer culturally.”

He laughs, “I’ve become the company tour guide, because I’ve been to Edinburgh a few times now and there is always something new to see, and that’s why I’m always excited to get back.”

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Festival Theatre, Nicolson Street, Tuesday 3-Saturday 7 March, 7.30pm (2.30pm), £29.59-£49.50, www.capitaltheatres.com